The RPI Challenge

As the façade of 2016 Candidate Donald Trump’s promised “America First” continues to crumble away, the baked-into-the-cake pathologies of the foreign and security policy “experts” who monopolize President Trump’s administration plunge forward along their predetermined paths. Any realistic notion of American national interests comes last after the priorities of – well, pretty much everyone else with leverage in Washington. Case in point, let’s start with Saudi Arabia and all the breast-beating...

When UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced her upcoming resignation from the position, establishment loyalists spent the day awash with grief that the Trump administration was losing one of its remaining moderate Republican voices. “Nikki Haley, ambassador to the United Nations, has resigned, leaving the administration with one less moderate Republican voice,” tweeted the New York Times, without defining what specifically is “moderate” about relentlessly pushing for war and starvation sanctions...

"For those who long wondered why throughout the presidential campaign Trump could not bring himself to say a critical word about Russian President Vladimir Putin, we now know the answer: Trump was hoping to do business in Russia, and doing so would require the approval of Putin." – USA Today Opinion Make no mistake, the mainstream left and state serving-media voices are trying to gaslight an entire generation into believing any candidate that wants peace with Russia may be a foreign...

The 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice to end World War I has generated a lot of discussion and articles about the so-called “Great War.” Most of the neocon chickenhawks who so eagerly led us into the disastrous war in Iraq seemingly want to be regarded as modern-day Winston Churchills. They might be very surprised to read Scott Berg’s great biography of Woodrow Wilson, which quotes Churchill as saying: “America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World...

The G20 is an economic club and it has traditionally stuck to that groove. And Saudi Arabia has traditionally been represented at G20 events by government ministers, usually the oil minister. But this time around, the Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, who is just a heartbeat away from becoming the king of Saudi Arabia, showed up. By doing so, Riyadh was pushing the envelope. It was insisting that the international community had better come to terms with the reality that MBS is the prince who...

Last week, many celebrated the advancement of Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 54, which had been introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), as a sign that the US Congress was finally willing to act to reduce the US’ culpability for the situation in Yemen, currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The bill, which will be voted on by the Senate this week, has been praised by many within the anti-war movement for its bid to “end” US military involvement in Yemen. Passage of the bill would,...

One of the local Washington television stations was doing a typical early morning honoring our soldiers schtick just before Thanksgiving. In it soldiers stationed far from home were treated to videolinks so they could talk to their families and everyone could nod happily and wish themselves a wonderful holiday. Not really listening, I became interested when I half heard that the soldier being interviewed was spending his Thanksgiving in Ukraine. It occurred to me that the soldier just might...

Given that we have all been born and raised under a regime that has the CIA, hardly anyone questions the power of the CIA to assassinate people. The CIA’s power of assassination has become a deeply established part of American life. Yet, the Constitution, which called the federal government into existence and established its powers, does not authorize the federal government to assassinate people. If the proponents of the Constitution had told the American people that the Constitution was...

After a week of insisting that a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina was going to happen, President Trump at the last minute sent out a Tweet explaining that due to a Russia/Ukraine dispute in the Sea of Azov he would no longer be willing to meet his Russian counterpart.According to Trump, the meeting had to be cancelled because the Russians seized three Ukrainian naval vessels in Russian waters that refused to follow instructions from the Russian military. But...

Accidentally disclosed information confirms the US is actively planning to prosecute Julian Assange. What happens to Assange will almost certainly change what can be lawfully published in our democracy. This threat to our freedoms is being largely ignored because Assange, once a progressive journalist, is now regarded as a hero-turned-zero. At stake? The ability of all journalists to inform the public of things the government specifically wants to withholdA clerical error revealed the Justice...

On Tuesday of this week, designated #GivingTuesday, I sent to our subscribers a rare direct call for donations. We are only too aware of the many organizations who constantly demand your contributions while never really demonstrating what you are getting for your money. So we regularly send our subscribers a weekly update of what we have published and the projects we are working on, packaged together with original and exclusive commentary/analysis usually provided by yours truly. Our...

President Donald Trump’s cancellation of his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Buenos Aires G20 is another sign of the now almost certain demise of his declared “America First” agenda – and perhaps of his presidency. Supposedly decided in response to a Ukraine-Russia naval incident in the Kerch Strait, dumping the meeting is universally and correctly seen as a response to the guilty plea of his former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to lying to Congress (notice...

For the first few hours after any new “bombshell” Russiagate story comes out, my social media notifications always light up with poorly written posts by liberal establishment loyalists saying things like “HAHAHA @caitoz this proves you wrong now will you FINALLY stop denying Russian collusion???” Then, when people start actually analyzing that story and noting that it comes nowhere remotely close to proving that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election,...

US President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel his G20 talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin reveals how easily he is swayed by the neoconservative hawks he appointed who exploited the Kerch Strait incident, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Director Daniel McAdams told Sputnik. 'The President [Trump] has spent decades puffing himself up as a great dealmaker and tough guy, but in fact, he's just a pushover,' McAdams said on Thursday. 'He's putty in neocon hands.' Trump's sudden...

Further evidence that The Guardian "entirely fabricated" a report that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange in 2013, 2015 and the spring of 2016; his passports...The Washington Times reports that Manafort's three passports reveal just two visits to England in 2010 and 2012, which support his categorical denial of the "totally false and deliberately libelous" report in The Guardian, which said that Manafort visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy - ostensibly to...

“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” — Justice William J. Brennan, City of Houston v. Hill What the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of...